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Community Fund Grantmaking Guide

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The Bonner Program Community Fund is meant to be both a student-initiated and student-managed process with guidance and support from program staff. The Community Fund provides the necessary resources for Bonner Scholars to benefit their program partners, implement new programs, or attend conferences and workshops for training. By using the Community Fund, students can maximize their initiative and management skills for community capacity building.

Source of Bonner Community Funds

The Bonner Community Fund is generated by an allocation of $50 per semester per Bonner Scholar or through an annual grant for funded Bonner Leader Programs. Any unused funds from the Community Fund are rolled over into the next school year to ensure that the maximum amount of resources are available for future projects and initiatives.

Bonner Program staff coordinate internally with their Business Offices to maintain an on-going ledger of Community Fund allocations and expenses so they know the current available balance to share with their Bonner Leadership Team. The Bonner Scholar Program staff report the Community Funds expenses in BWBRS system under the "Community Fund" tab. Bonner Leader Program staff report their Community Fund activity and balance in their annual Bonner Leader Program Fiscal Report.

Uses for the Bonner Community Fund

The Bonner Community Fund can be used for activities related to the following three categories:

Community Program: Direct donations to community-based organizations and nonprofits.
Student Program: expenses to support student-led service projects, programs, and community-based experiences.
Training: expenses to attend relevant conferences, workshops, and other trainings, including for staff, community partners, students, and faculty (i.e. training for faculty on developing community-engaged courses, etc.).

Examples of appropriate uses of the Bonner Community Fund include:

Covering the start-up expenses for a Bonner Scholar-designed service project;
Purchasing books or other supplies for individuals involved in community programs and organizations;
Paying summer camp tuition for children tutored by Bonner Scholars;
Training-related expenses, including travel and registration expenses for conferences and workshops (with a maximum training expense of no more than 25% of the total opening balance in any semester).
Funding and training for faculty to develop community-engaged learning courses
Service Trips
Campus-wide student development programming

Examples of inappropriate uses of the Community Fund include:

Donations to agencies or projects where Bonner Scholars or other students from your institution are not directly involved;
Travel expenses to and from service sites during the school year and the summer;
Supplement to summer living funds for summer placements or internships;
Food or drinks for Bonner Scholar meetings;
Expenses related to an awards program;
Expenses related to the general administration of the Bonner Scholars Program (travel, printing, phone, equipment, salaries*).

Management of Bonner Community Funds

Student leadership in the management of the Bonner Community Fund is an important feature of funded Bonner Programs. As you’ll see in the Guide section that follows, programs are required to have a student-led, staff-supervised process for student submission of proposals, review, awarding, and tracking of student-led or student-connected community service projects and partners. The Bonner Program staff role is to a) maintain accurate reporting of the allocations into and the expenses out of their Bonner Community Fund and b) give final approval to student-approved Community Fund proposal expenses to ensure they are eligible uses.